We all just had a conversation about a hypothetical situation that if any of us were in a burning building, would any of us risk our life to drag another out if said another couldn’t help themselves. You chuckled and said “I can’t die, I have kids!” So you’re saying I’m more expendable than you because I don’t have rugrats to take care of. You’re fucked. Betcha you wouldn’t have appreciated it if I said to you, “I have a degree and a career while you didn’t even finish high school, therefore I’m more valuable than you are because I’m more employable.” Really though, if one us had to go, I’m sure society would have more use for me. But I kept my mouth shut, because I have more class than you. -Childless
This article appears in May 22-28, 2014.
Next time, stick to playing “Fuck, Marry, Kill” Less potential for hurt feelings.
maybe before you got all lathered up you could stop and think maybe he/she meant the very typical exhausted parent lament of not even having a choice over her own life. because of the kids. ‘sorry, I don’t have sex – I have kids’ ‘sorry, I don’t get holidays – I have kids’
considering even you noticed the chuckle it doesn’t sound like a serious remark.
and given your self justifying reaction – you could use a shot of humour. and in my books, a humourless person is of no value whatsoever, so go jump in the lake.
While you’re in the lake maybe ponder how everything isn’t about vous.
What a stupid question to ask. A fire can be lethal and going into one without protection is stupid and very few people would do it, kids or not. I bet you haven’t been in one. Depending on the severity, you will have flames, smoke, falling objects, and due to the smoke you couldn’t see 6 inches in front of you. All that together makes it pretty well impossible to enter a raging fire. Of course then there is the matter of trying to drag a full grown adult out of the place.
But you didn’t keep your mouth shut, you posted here. I’m just saying, if either of you were on fire and I had water, I’d drink it.
“I can’t die, I have kids” doesn’t make a lick fucking amount of sense and is completely illogical. So stop taking that shit so seriously :p of course you’re not more expendable, you can take them after he dies!! Problem solved… NEXT!!
i don’t like hypothetical questions, the answer for me is usually, “i would pee my pants or kill someone”^^
Actually, it’s the opposite. You already fulfilled you biological imperative bud, and are now expendable. Is what you might have said, I dunno.
As Michael Jackson might say ‘you have kids, how interesting, sleepover?’
At one time it used to be women and children first, now it’s children and pets first, adults can look after themselves.
Shit dude, I don’t have kids and I *still* probably wouldn’t go into a burning building to get you.
The Amazing Klyde’s right: children and pets first (and the disabled and elderly).
Also: funny thing about becoming a parent, OB – I’ve heard that once you have kids you tend to (if you’re not a completely shitty parent) put them ahead of everyone, including yourself…. I’d say if you had kids, OB, you’d probably feel the same as this person. Alsox2: you should probably just eat that chip on your shoulder and get over it.
^^^Unless you’re the Captain of either the Costa Concordia or the Korean Ferry that flipped.
I would think talking about it is one thing, but most really wouldn’t know how they would react unless it actually happened. Seems like the remark was tongue in cheek
THE CRITERIA OF HUMAN WORTH
“I have a degree and a career while you didn’t even finish high school, therefore I’m more valuable than you because I’m more employable.” Childless
What is the issue here? What is going on? Clearly, it is the old philosophical question relating to the criteria of human worth. On what basis, if any, are distinctions to be made in respect to assigning different values to individual lives where one must be sacrificed in order to save the other? (Forget “risking one’s life,” let’s go the whole hog.)
In the present case, “Childless” advances a pragmatic or utilitarian criterion, that his already having a degree and a career which (incoherently) then makes him more valuable because it makes him “more employable,” trumps the Parent who, while having children, didn’t even finish high school. On the other hand, one supposes that the Parent, if given a chance, would advance a biological criterion, one related to the perpetuation of the human species which Childless has clearly failed to fulfill. So how is one to judge those competing criteria of human worth?
To maintain that one cannot so judge them since, it is maintained, all human beings are of equal worth overlooks the fact that they differ radically in terms of talent, ability, intellectual insight and so on. To maintain that all men (yes, yes, and women as well) are equal is true only in the legal sense of being equal before the law which, by its very nature, applies universally and impartially without exception to anyone who is considered to be human at all. But to say, for instance, that a member of the Halifax Underclass is the equal of Shakespeare would beggar belief. Clearly, the latter is in no respect whatsoever the equal of the Bard. But the question still stands: In view of the fact that all men are not equal, on what basis is the assessment of varying worth to be made?
As with so must else, the question ultimately comes down to one’s philosophy, specifically to the issue of justice. So what is justice? The dictionary definition – “Just conduct; fairness, exercise of authority in maintenance of right; reward of virtue & punishment of vice” (The Concise Oxford Dictionary) – doesn’t take us very far since the question of just what “right conduct” consists remains open as does that of “fairness” and so on. So formal dictionary definitions are out because they are just circular, presupposing the very thing which they presume to define.
One thing that can be said is that justice, by its nature, is a human social construct, one not found in nature. Indeed, among other things, it is that which distinguishes us from the other vertebrates roaming the earth. So to get a handle on that of which justice consists we must expand the question from the individual case to that of society taken as a whole.
However, the standard definitions of a just society aren’t much help either. Plato, for example, maintained that a just society consists of each doing that for which he was best suited but how is one to determine that for which one is best suited? Indeed, if that is true, both Childless and the Parent could both claim that they embodied instances of social justice.
In the same way the Utilitarians of the 18th. and 19th. centuries aren’t much help either. One thinks of Jeremy Bentham, for example, whose happiness principle – “the greatest happiness for the for the greatest number” – would accommodate both Childless and the parent since both, one supposes, were both happy but for different reasons. In the same way, John Stewart Mill’s hedonistic pleasure principle – “Pleasure is the only thing desired; therefore pleasure is the only thing desirable” – would similarly accommodate both Childless and the Parent since both, one supposes, took pleasure in their respective pursuits but for different reasons.
So what is the answer? How is one to adjudicate the competing claims of Childless and the Parent in respect to the criteria of human worth? It’s a good question. I’m glad you asked.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
People get mad at me and call me soulless because I say I’d give up a stranger before my dog any day. F them, people piss me off – my dog loves me unconditionally. If I had the choice – my dog or a building full of people, I’d take my dog without batting a lash. People just don’t get it.
pooches before people any day here too!
and back to whining op…..your co-worker probably did not mean that society values him/her more because she has bred little ones. he/she most likely means exactly what ustwess and I mean. WE have OUR priorities based on what WE value, and they may not include hauling some other person out of a burning building. frig cares what society values. I don’t.
I feel the same way about my 2 cats, ustwess! I don’t care for dogs very much, but I still like them better than most people.
If they can’t die and have kids, they should also then have life insurance…
which would set the young skin-bag for life.
Parent is being neglectful here by NOT dying in a fire.
Shame on them…
Discussing ‘hypothetical situations’ strikes me as a collosal waste of time when you could actually could be doing something constructive in ‘real time’. Like participating.
Sorry, I’ve had many beloved pets over the years, cats, dogs and horses but I would not put their lives before human ones. Unless it was Stephen Harper – I’d gladly carry a spastic rhino on my back across the Bay of Fundy than save that steaming coil of humanity.
Hypothetically, if you were up to your neck in shit and somebody flicked a snotball at you, would you duck?
Corrections!
Paragraph 3, line 11: “Clearly the FORMER (not the “latter”) is in no respect whatsoever the equal of the Bard.”
Paragraph 6, line 5: “Parent” for “parent.”
RSVPS: All the unreflective commenters above.
The question was not what anyone might so happen to choose given the hypothetical situation of a fire in the building but rather whether one could one justify that choice by reference to an independent criterion of human worth. I could easily have given my own criterion – that of possessing a reflective mind – but refrained from doing so in the interests of an attempt at objectivity.
Using my own criterion, of course, I would have let all the unreflective commenters above, i.e., those unable to engage the hypothetical situation philosophically, to burn.
BURN BABY, BURN!
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
First it’s the kids, then the pets, then elders gotta be saved, and the disabled, then next it’ll be the washer/dryer set (two trips), self-playing piano, etc. Geez.